The next is understanding the violent people have goals and parameters. What they want and what they don’t want. The goal will determine the type of crime. If you need money to feed an addiction, your choices are theft, burglary, robbery– stuff like that. If you get off on seeing a woman crying and begging, assault and rape. Those are goals.

The parameters, commonly, include not getting hurt, not getting arrested, not losing your reputation (especially if you are active in a criminal subculture) and in some cases violent people will respond very violently to attacks on their egos.

In LoV, we hit the following six questions from the criminal point of view, so each person by the end of the day has played Design-a-Crime. Only after do we go back over the list with an eye to prevention. For this essay, it’s going to be mixed.

Question 1: Who? Certain people make better targets for certain types of crime than others. If it’s about money, out-of-town business men and tourists tend to carry cash and equipment and generally won’t fly back to testify. Before direct deposit, the day the social security checks arrived each month was hunting season on the elderly. If the motivation is rape, it varies. For some it’s people who remind the perpetrator of someone in the past. Or it could be any target of opportunity. Or a specific type (one of the reasons why dressing down or trying to appear unattractive isn’t a successful strategy). If the goal is simple bullying, the threat seeks out emotionally labile victims. Etc.

In the risk/reward equation that the threat does, if you can honestly discern what visible rewards you might offer and the apparent risk you represent, you can get a good handle on your victim profile. I have enough gray in the beard that Monkey Dancing shouldn’t happen. I’m nobody’s idea of a good time for abduction rape. I’m middle-aged with a limp when I’m tired and that moves me up the list for simple muggings…

Question 2: Where? Whatever your preferred victim profile, they congregate somewhere. Out of town businessmen can be found at the convention center, hotel bars and strip clubs. Tourists congregate where there is stuff to see. If you target college-age women, they can be found on campus…

These are target selection sites, not necessarily where the crimes will happen. Pick-pocketing, sure. But the asocial violent stuff requires privacy

Question 3: Ripeness? I should find a better word, but these are all the behavioral clues that indicate which of your preferred targets will be easiest to take. You have a bar full of out-of-town businessmen (or college girls)– who do you pick? Alone, distracted, slobbering drunk, anxious to please, weak, awkward… We all have good predatory instincts. Bad guys are bad guys because they act on them.

Questions 1-3 are the heart of prevention. And in this instant, prevention is tons better than response. Things only get worse from here and your options decrease. To whatever extent possible, stay off the first list. You don’t get choices in most of it, but you can be a tourist without looking like a tourist. You don’t have a choice about your size and old age comes to everyone lucky enough to survive. But at almost any age you can still move like an athlete.
The second list of places– you’re going to go to those places sometimes, but know to keep your guard up and your eyes open. Wild animals don’t get complacent approaching a watering hole. Neither should you.
The third list is where all of that self-defense advice comes from– walk like you have purpose; don’t have headphones in when jogging in remote areas; don’t text and walk; don’t pull out a map and look lost…

The bad guys have one or several preferred victim types. They go to the places where their types congregate. They choose the best prey from the herd. Those are steps 1-3. Here on out is where things get messy.

Step 4. Isolation. In order to do bad things to humans, you need time and privacy. Note, we’re talking about predators here, for most of the social violence, there will be an audience, because it’s a show. To predators, audience=witnesses.

There are a bunch of ways to get people alone. But only a few basic strategies. Wait, follow, lure, trick, intimidate, snatch and groom.

Waitcan be simple. If you know your target profiles travel through a particular space, you can just be there. The restroom at the bar. A bench on a lonely stretch of jogging trail. When the crime is more specifically targeted, there will be an element of intelligence gathering. Ted Bundy would strike up a conversation in the library on campus. Most people in a conversation will give up seemingly innocuous information, like which dorm you live in. Once he knew the dorm, he could pick the most isolated place to wait between the library and that dorm.
Prevention– know when you are in a good, isolated hunting ground and be on alert. Watch for unusual behaviors in isolated places. If you are jogging and a guy is sitting on a bench and gets up and starts walking toward you, the timing on that should make you a little suspicious…

Follow is obvious. Get in the habit, especially in isolated places, of knowing what is around you. Use reflections and shadows. There is an eye trick to get your peripheral vision up to about 270degrees. Don’t know how too write it, ask me if we meet in person. But that allows you to get a 360 look with a simple glance right then left.

Lure. Offer the target something he or she wants. “Mister, there’s a temple that’s not on the tourist map, let me show you…” Be skeptical, set hard boundaries.

Trick. Just like lure. “Your mommy was in an accident. Your daddy sent me to get you. Get in the car quick.” Emotional attacks tend to lower your judgment. It can be very hard to remember what normal protocols are when you get a shock. Like the voice message that says the IRS is coming after you or the guy in the overalls who says there’s been a gas leak. Some emotional detachment (which is much easier said than done) and a good handle on what the normal protocols are, will help.

Intimidate. Threat shows a weapon and says, “Come with me, don’t make a scene.” Or “Do what I want, I know your kids are upstairs.” This one bleeds into step 5 as well. Three things about this tactic. 1) There is almost never a good reason for a guy with a weapon to want alone time with you. The secondary crime scene is very bad. Do not go. 2) He is not your friend, and therefor his advice is to serve him, not you. If someone tells you not to make a scene, that is probably the absolute best thing you can do. 3) At this moment, you probably have more resources than you realize, for instance other people. If someone is trying to get you isolated that means there are people in reach who would help you, not him. Scream. And use the word ‘pervert’. It has a magical effect.

Snatch. Just physically dragging you off. Generally, this won’t happen as an isolation tactic, it will happen when the victim is already isolated (walking down a deserted road, for instance. There is an exception for certain countries with kidnapping businesses or that like beheading people on video. When the police can’t or won’t solve certain crimes, people can get snatched with witnesses. I have some opinions here, but the go-to guy for this is Ed Calderon.

Groom. This is a long term tactic to create a safe and pliable victim. It is a steady process of removing the victim’s agency and will to independence. Common in many domestic violence cycles, long-term abductions and long-term seduction crimes.

Step 5. Psychological control. How does the bad guy psych you out of fighting back? There are a lot of ways– display of force or weapons, threats, surprise, positioning. Moving or talking too fast for you to close your OODA loop and think/act. Playing on your social conditioning (one of the most effective ways bad guys use to violate boundaries is to simply ask the person why they are being so rude.) Many tactics. But here’s the deal: He wouldn’t be trying to psych you out of fighting back unless he thought you could do so successfully. He’s probably bigger and stronger. Probably more experienced and skilled at violence. But a win here is not beating him in a match, a win is in raising the stakes beyond what he is willing to play. This is the time for surprise, commitment and violence of action.

Note. This is not the time for half measures. Slapping or hitting the chest will not only fail, but will likely be punished. This is destruction for the sake of your survival, not sending a message that the bad guy’s behavior is unacceptable. He has already chosen to act unacceptably.

Step 6. Physical destruction. If the bad guy decides to skip step five, he will take his target out. It will be as safe and efficient for him as he can make it. Everything is in the bad guy’s favor. He can choose the victim (tiny, drunk, college girl) the place, the time. He can even choose the initial position (bending over trying to put her keys in the lock.) It’s not about how to fight fighters. He can slam her head into the door. Or hit her in the back of a neck with a brick or steel water bottle.

In the LoV class, this is the big “reveal” moment. Each pair of students has designed a violent crime, created an ambush the way they would set it up. They have demonstrated some really vicious, sneaky stuff. And then I ask, do you train for this? Do you have solutions for the types of assault you would commit? And the room goes silent.

The big gains are in staying off the list from 1-3. Each step beyond gets more desperate and has fewer options.